Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor is brushing off Wall Street skeptics, claiming the company’s bitcoin-backed financial model makes shorting its stock a losing bet—and declaring that bitcoin is headed to $1 million.

Saylor: Short Strategy at Your Peril

This week, Strategy added 1,045 bitcoin to its reserves, bringing total holdings to 582,000 BTC—valued at more than $60 billion. In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg, Executive Chairman Michael Saylor rejected recent criticism from short seller Jim Chanos and defended the premium Strategy shares command over bitcoin’s spot price.

Saylor argued Chanos doesn’t truly understand what Strategy’s business model is. “We’re actually the largest issuer of bitcoin-backed credit instruments in the world,” Saylor said, highlighting the company’s issuance of preferred stocks—STRIKE, STRIDE and STRIFE—that allow it to raise capital without diluting shareholders.

Last week’s bitcoin purchase, worth $110 million, was funded entirely through those instruments. Saylor dismissed concerns about overvaluation, asserting that Strategy is not a closed-end trust but an operating company with the ability to generate additional bitcoin gains. “Our company generated a BTC-dollar gain equal to about $8.4 billion in the first two quarters of this year,” he said.

Saylor further noted that Strategy is projecting $15 billion in bitcoin-related earnings for 2025. He also delivered a bullish forecast about bitcoin’s trajectory: “Winter’s not coming back. Bitcoin’s not going to zero—it’s going to $1 million.” Saylor pointed to increasing institutional interest, ETF inflows and a tightening daily supply of just 450 BTC as driving forces behind his bullish outlook.

Saylor said:

If bitcoin rallies to $500,000 or $1 million, then sure, it could fall $200,000 from those levels. But right now, it only takes $50 million to turn the engine of the crypto economy.

Saylor also shrugged off concerns about quantum computing, arguing that tech giants like Microsoft and Google have no incentive to undermine global cryptography, which would threaten their own businesses. He added that any future threat would be telegraphed well in advance, giving bitcoin ample time to adapt. “Bitcoin is less vulnerable than most other digital systems,” he stressed.

Turning to artificial intelligence (AI), Saylor claimed AI would become one of bitcoin’s largest demand drivers. “AI will do 100,000 transactions a minute,” he said, explaining that the speed and logic of intelligent machines will reject legacy banking infrastructure. Instead, he argued, bitcoin and layer two networks will offer the instant, transparent settlement layer AI will require to function at scale.